On the other side of the mountain from the realms populated by the gracelings is a different world of monsters: the Dells. Fire is the last of the human monsters (animals that are very similar to normal, but have striking beauty and are very much noticeably different in coloring). Fire has the ability to control minds, but she must decide what makes her a monster: her ability or her decisions.

This story was a bit dramatic taking turns which were (for the most part) expected. Several characters were sleeping around (to the point that you could almost make all the main characters related somehow). Nothing went easy for Fire at any point and you didn’t expect it to. In the graceling we found people that had special abilities and though rare, there were many. In this book there is only one special person, our protagonist. She is special by her mind reading ability and her striking beauty to stupefy both women and men. The Dells consists of a world ruled by a king with feuding lords, but the main draw for the reader is the monsters. They are like their normal counterpart in almost every way, but they are deadly, colorful, and attractive to most humans. Quite a combination I wouldn’t want to be around. While this was considered part of the graceling world, it was completely different and only had one character that traversed between the sides of the mountain.

As with Graceling, I enjoyed Cashore’s writing and this was a great book also.